Howdy! My hotrod 54 Dodge pickup is a daily driver now and most of the bugs are worked out. I have a lot of welding and body work to do but all the major rust is gone (also the bottom edge of the driver’s door is gone haha). I’m gonna take my time replacing problem areas of metal and getting the gaps right, spraying epoxy sealer primer as I go but eventually I will be spraying the whole truck with a half decent home made paintjob. It’s not my first rodeo but I’m not a pro painter. I will practice technique and make samples before painting, use decent compatible materials etc. but I have some ideas to make it more fun than the average single stage deal I am already comfortable doing. I have the idea that it would look cool a dark silver gunmetal color but I want to spice it up with some red flake in the clear. I understand the technical challenges there and I’m not too worried about that, more curious if anybody did that and has decent pics of it? Not flaked out like a bass boat, just a little sparkle close up in the sun or a reddish shine from 20’. I can find a lot of pics online of metallic base with matching color flake in the intermediate clear or candy layers but none with a contrasting color flake on a darker background. Anybody got pics or wanna talk about this idea? For sure it’s not an original notion, probably even deep into the laquer on topic era? Seen one like that? Gaudy? Subtle? Almost impossible to keep from looking uneven or just terrible for some reason? Thanks Radar
Havent done a dark base with contrasting flake, but recently shot a motorcycle (very OT so wont post pics) for a friend in white base with red micro flake. It looks horrible. I have jokingly named it freckles. From a distance it has a pink hue then up close it looks goofy. I tried to warn him about this but he insisted so hes got a fugly bike now.
Yup my buddy did a crotch rocket in dark silver but with fairly heavy rainbow hologram flakes it was pretty bad. I am looking at a silver slightly darker than battleship gray and a darker more maroon flake. But haven’t seen it done in person. I already have a 4wd with an older repaint that was like a cranberry metallic- all the sun faded areas are basically pink. It’s hilarious I tell dudes my truck is the pink one they always say ‘nah it’s like a red metallic’ but I know if I said mine’s the red one they’d be like ‘oh the barbie truck over there?’ Haha my daughter likes it but no pink or freckles on my hotrod!
I suggest just adding the red metalflake to the dark silver. It will lay down more evenly distributed even if extra passes have to be sprayed in certain areas, and easier to blend in should you need repairs later. There's nothing particularly tricky spraying clear but there's potential to get a lot more complicated with flake in the clear. I had a vehicle with an accent crease down the side that lined up with the hood gap. I wanted the crease dark (black) and my painter came up with the idea to add a touch of multi-color flake in it to add to the illusion of the crease being a gap in the metallic colors to mimic the hood gap. That last sentence is a mouthful........ but I think the result turned out nice and not over-complicated.
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